Hurstmanceaux walked through the streets and felt his ears tingle as he heard the newsboys shouting the names of newspapers. His sister had said rightly; he was not a man of his time; he was impetuous in action, warm in feeling, sensitive in honor; he had nothing of the cynical morality, the apathetic indifference, the cool opportunism of modern men of his age. He was no philosopher, and he could not bring himself to smile at an unprincipled action. He felt as ashamed as though he were himself at fault, as he entered the duke’s apartments in Otterbourne House. Hurstmanceaux and the duke had much regard for each other, but their conversation was usually somewhat guarded and reserved, for the one could not say all he thought of Otterbourne’s son, and the other could not say all he thought of Ronald’s sister. There were many subjects on which they mutually preserved silence. But this appointment of Kenilworth seemed so monstrous to both that it broke the reserve between them. They each felt to owe the other an apology. “My dear Ronald,” said the duke, holding out his hand, “I know why you have come. I thank you.” “I dare not offer any plea in her defence,” replied Hurstmanceaux huskily; “I can only tell you how grieved I am that your constant kindness and forbearance to my sister should meet with so base a requital.” The duke sighed. “I am bound in honor to remember that the basest of men is her husband--and my son!” They were both silent. The morning papers were lying on a table by the duke’s side, amongst them the green cover of _Truth_. “That is no excuse for her,” said her brother at length. “This thing is of her devising much more than it is his.” “There are women who are a moral phylloxera,” replied Otterbourne. “They corrupt all they touch. But in fairness to her I must say that it was chiefly my son who persuaded me to let this man Massarene into my house. They made me an accomplice in a job! Perhaps,” the duke added with a sad smile, “the world knows me well enough to give me credit for having been an unconscious accomplice--for having been a fool, not a knave!” To these two honest gentlemen the matter was one of excruciating pain, and of what seemed to them both intolerable humiliation. But society, though it laughed loudly for five minutes over the article on an hereditary legislator, forgot it five minutes later, and was not shocked: it is too well-used in these days to similar transactions between an impoverished nobility, with unpaid rents and ruinous death-duties, and a new-born plutocracy creeping upward on its swollen belly like the serpent of Scripture. CHAPTER XI.